


The Production Process

by trumpetofdoom



Category: Girl Genius (Webcomic)
Genre: Comedy, Gen, Master Payne's Circus of Adventure - Freeform, Pre-Canon, Sausage-making
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-02
Updated: 2020-08-02
Packaged: 2021-03-05 23:08:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,224
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25663396
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/trumpetofdoom/pseuds/trumpetofdoom
Summary: The Circus decides to write a new play.
Comments: 24
Kudos: 35





	The Production Process

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the [Girl Genius 2020 Song Challenge](https://girlgeniusevents.tumblr.com/post/622403347844071424/girl-genius-song-challenge), inspired (loosely) by the song ["Hard to Be the Bard"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y_bPbSqESzE) from the show _Something Rotten!_

It began, as many things do, with a simple question. 

“When’s the last time we got a new show?” Lars asked Abner one night as they sat at the campfire, after a brief rehearsal of _The Heterodyne Boys and the Pneumatic Oyster_. 

Abner thought about it for a moment. “I’m not sure. We do have enough already to fill out a full multi-year circuit and have some left over, and that’s without the ones that are heavy on Lucrezia. I’d like to do some of those when we get someone who both _wants_ to play Lucrezia and actually _can_ , but I don’t know when that’s going to be.” 

“If you’re not sure, that probably means it’s been too long.” 

Abner shrugged. “I guess it would be nice to have something _new_ , not just something we haven’t done in a while.” 

The firelight flickered across Lars's face. “You want me to look around when I get to the next town and see if I can find something?” 

“Mm... sure, why not. I’d be surprised if you find something in Ptičije Oko, but you never know.” 

* * *

“Find anything?” Abner asked Lars as the circus was setting up. 

“Yes, actually, but only a show that’s got a lot of Lucrezia,” said Lars. “So nothing we can use in the near foreseeable future.” 

“Sounds like we need to write one ourselves, then.” 

Lars frowned. “Do we have anyone who can do that? I thought we’d agreed not to let Taki do it after what happened with _Puzzle Puppet_ , and I don’t want to throw it on Master Payne, he’s got enough to do.” 

Abner shrugged. “I’ve been involved in enough Heterodyne shows to know how these things go. I could probably write one if I had to.” 

“I mean, I could try. Shouldn’t be too hard, should it?” Lars asked, demonstrating the kind of naïve optimism that had caused him to run off and join the circus in the first place. 

“Let me know how that goes for you. Right, looks like I need to go help Moonsock set up,” Abner said, heading over to the animal trainer’s stand. 

* * *

Performance days with the circus were always busy, and the troupe was usually spent (or otherwise occupied) after a show, so it wasn’t until they were back on the road that Abner had a chance to check in with Lars. 

“Any progress?” 

Lars shrugged. “I’ve got a couple of titles I was thinking about. Figured I’d pick one of those and then figure out the story to go with them.” 

Abner nodded. “Same. What were you thinking of?” 

“My first thought was _Void Princess of Frankfurt_.” 

Abner raised an eyebrow. “Is there any way that ends up _not_ being Lucrezia?” 

Lars actually slumped. “I guess we can’t use it, then.” 

“Not for now, anyway. What else?” 

And at this, Lars perked right back up. “Picture this: _The Heterodyne Boys and the Torpedo of the Dinosaur Fencer_!” 

Abner pictured it. “I can think of at least three different ways to do that.” 

“You like it? 

“It sounds... ambitious.” 

“You don’t like it.” Lars had known his roommate long enough to hear what he wasn’t saying. 

“I think someone could potentially write a very fun show with that title, but I suspect you’re biting off more than you can chew for a first time. But, you know, good luck.” 

“All right, then, what did you have in mind?” 

“I’m trying to choose between _Lightning Rod of Rome_ or _Ghost Murderer of Australia_.” 

Lars thought about this. “Is that a murderer who _is_ a ghost, or a murderer who _kills_ ghosts?” 

“The first, I think.” Abner lowered his voice to say, “The second sounds too much like Dame Ædith for me to be entirely comfortable using it as the villain in a show we do.” 

Lars winced. Everyone remembered what had happened on their last visit to Zumzum. “Did they ever go to Australia?” 

Abner shrugged. “I’m pretty sure they went to China. They probably could have swung by some time around then.” 

* * *

“Were you the one who let André know that we were doing this?” Abner opened the door to climb into their wagon. 

Lars paused in the middle of changing clothes, shirt half off. “Yeah, I mentioned it to him. Why do you ask?” 

“Because now he wants songs.” Abner flopped into the chair at his desk, dramatically enough that Lars might have suggested he try acting if the Circus hadn’t had more need of a director. “And I really don’t want to write verse.” 

“Oh?” Lars finished taking his shirt off and began rummaging through his clothes for another. 

“Finding words that fit both a rhyme scheme and a meter is a pain. And God help you if you want to do anything clever.” 

Lars found a shirt and began to pull it on. “Isn’t it kind of his job to take what we give him and make it work?” 

Abner snorted. “Are you suggesting that we antagonize our Barry by deliberately giving him libretti that are difficult to write music around? I’d think you in particular would not want to do that, since he’ll try to get back at you by writing music for you that’s difficult to sing.” 

Lars, now fully clothed, winced. “Good point.” He then paused, as an idea came to him. “I wonder if someone could steer him away by pointing out that Balthazar’s going to want to play his horn if André is writing new music?” 

“Hey, be fair, he’s gotten better.” 

“ _Better_ , yes.” The sound of the horn that André had discovered and Balthazar had been learning how to play could be heard from somewhere in the camp. “I’m not sure I’d call him _good_ yet.” 

* * *

André would not be dissuaded, however, and so it was that first Abner and then eventually Lars gave him a couple of songs’ worth of lyrics and a loose plot outline to which he could begin writing incidental music. Abner was pretty sure there was a didgeridoo somewhere in the props wagon, or at least something that could be repurposed into one. 

* * *

The town of Bašaid was one of those settlements that springs up at every highway junction: the kind of place that’s not necessarily large and doesn’t have much going on in its own right, but has a general store and an inn or two. It did, however, get a lot of through traffic from travelers that needed to spend a night on their way between some combination of Belgrade, Szeged, Novi Sad and Timișoara, being far enough away from all of them that it made a convenient place to stop, and those travelers tended to share news and talk about what they’d seen. 

It was, in short, exactly the kind of place to try out a new show and get free advertising. 

Assuming, of course, that the show was ready by the time they got there. Which was not always a reliable assumption with new material, but that was why the Circus had several old standbys that they could perform as a backup plan. _Cast Iron Glacier_ was easy to do without much rehearsal or prep time, and Lars knew the show well enough that he didn’t even need to rehearse it unless there was someone new in the cast. So of course as word got out that Abner and Lars were each trying to write a new show, people kept asking Abner if they could take a quick look at the _Cast Iron Glacier_ script. 

“I kinda think I ought to feel insulted,” Abner confided to Master Payne at dinner one night, after approximately the seventh different actor asked to refresh themselves on how the fallback show went. 

“Well, you are untested. You’ve been reliable in other respects, but this is new for you,” Payne observed. “How’s it coming?” 

“I don’t think I’ll quite have it fully written by the time we’ll need to start rehearsals,” Abner admitted, “but it’ll be close, and in the meantime we can just rehearse the scenes we have. I’ll probably be making changes anyway once I hear how it sounds. The crew’s making sure that the ghost effect works the way they want it to, and they’re very thankful that they can just use sugar for the poison.” 

Payne nodded. “Well, it sounds like you’re more or less on track. What about Lars?” 

“He’s been dragging his heels a bit. André wanted some lyrics changed, and I don’t think he’s gotten back to him yet.” Abner took a drink. “Zeetha’s really looking forward to doing fight choreo for it, but it’ll depend on what Organza and the props team come up with and how much it restricts their range of motion. And of course she can’t work the fights that have Lars if he’s off on his advance man duties.” 

“She’s not doing the fight choreography for yours?” The Countess had taken a seat next to her husband. 

“Oh, she is, but for mine it doesn’t have to be as involved,” said Abner. “She’s expecting to really cut loose with his, because you _know_ there’s going to have to be a fight scene with the Dinosaur Fencer at some point, possibly more than one. Fight call’s going to take probably ten or fifteen minutes, and for _Ghost Murderer_ it’ll only take about two.” 

Payne nodded. “Keep at it, and let me know if there’s anything you need my help with.” 

“Yes, sir.” 

* * *

As director, Abner was invited to all of the music rehearsals, but he tended to be pretty hands-off at them: that was André’s job as the music master, and Abner only needed to step in if something André wanted would interfere with something else in the show, which didn’t happen often. 

As playwright (and playwright of a work in progress, at that), he was naturally a bit more interested in how his composer was adding to the work he’d done. So he approached the first music rehearsal for his show with some trepidation, only slightly moderated by the fact that he wouldn’t be alone: it would also be the first music rehearsal for Lars’s show. 

Halfway through the first song of _Torpedo of the Dinosaur Fencer_ , Lars raised his hand to draw a cutoff from André. “Were you planning to _tell me_ at some point that the first four measures were at a different tempo and in a different meter than the rest of the song? Seriously, that is just enough time to figure out how you’re waving your arms before you go and change it.” 

“Oh, is that not marked on your part? I’m so sorry,” André said with patent insincerity. “Maybe if you’d given me the libretto sooner, I wouldn’t have had to rush the new parts, and this wouldn’t have happened.” 

“Hey, André?” asked Professor Therm, who among her many duties was the troupe’s ukulelist and keyboard understudy. “Number three in _Ghost Murderer_ seems to end in a weird place. Is there a page missing or something?” 

At this, André actually looked concerned. “I hope not, because I don’t know where it could have gotten to. Let me take a look?” He walked over to Therm at the piano and started looking through pages. “Yeah, you’re right, that does look like there ought to be more after it, but I don’t see it anywhere. And I’m not sure I can reconstruct it, because I may have been fuguing a bit when I wrote it.” 

Therm took another look at the page. “Really? This doesn’t look like a fugue to — oh, the Sparky kind, right.” 

“Let’s play through it and see what happens,” André decided. “We can make changes after that if we need to.” 

What happened, as it turned out, was that Therm’s piano part ran out of measures in exactly the same place as all the other musicians’ parts — but with a few lines of the lyrics still to go, and with no obvious connection to the next cue. 

“Do we really need those lyrics,” André asked Abner, “or can we just end it right there, and I’ll tweak it so that it actually sounds like an ending?” 

Abner’s initial thought was, _You’re the one who wanted them in the first place_ , but what he actually said was, “Go ahead and cut them. There’s only one plot point in them, and I can probably work that into the dialogue.” 

* * *

When the day of the first read-through arrived, Abner made very clear as he was handing out scripts that these were probably not the final versions, and that if anyone had edits or additions to suggest, they would be considered. (" _Not_ automatically accepted. We want to make the best show we can, but I will throw out anything obviously stupid.") 

Twenty-five minutes in, the part of Abner's script that they'd read so far was so heavily marked up with ad-libs and wording tweaks that one could be forgiven for wondering if he'd spilled ink on it. 

"We think the victim died from iocane poisoning!" said Sofia, taking a break from her normal persona as Thundering Engine Woman to instead play the Australian Guide. 

Lars looked up from his script. "Should we know what that is?" 

"Good, we're using that," Abner murmured, writing Lars's ad-lib down. "Keep going." 

"You don't know what iocane is?" Sofia asked, as if Bill Heterodyne had just indicated he was unfamiliar with the concept of the passage of time. "Why, every Australian knows about it!" 

"We're not Australian," André said. 

"Then I shall tell you! Iocane is a white powder that is odorless! Tasteless! Dissolves instantly in liquid! And is among the deadliest poisons known to man!" 

"Deadly, you say? So does it crack the Australian top ten?" asked André. 

Sofia opened her mouth as if to speak, then closed it to consider her answer, silently counted most of the way to ten on her fingers, and confidently declared, "...Maybe." 

This set off a round of laughter from the cast, congregated around the campfire. 

"Oh, that's reassuring," Taki-as-Klaus groused. 

"So, relative to drop bears..." Lars began. 

Olga was a somewhat common sight on Master Payne's stage as the High Priestess, and dropped into the role as easily as putting on a hat. "Oh, iocane is much more toxic than drop bears. But a drop bear's venom isn't usually what kills you when you're dealing with them. Welcome to my temple, outsiders." 

Abner sighed. "I'm going to end up rewriting half this show, aren't I?" 

* * *

If anything, “half” was a low estimate. Probably greater than fifty percent of the words in Abner’s original draft remained, and that probably made up more than fifty percent of the revised version, but the changes were so numerous and so thoroughly spread throughout the play that he ended up having to transcribe the whole thing anew. 

* * *

“Oh, ye of little faith,” Abner said, seeing the stacks of pies that Gunthar and Otto had set up “just in case things went wrong.” 

They’d reached Bašaid with _Dinosaur Fencer_ not quite ready to go. Zeetha wasn’t confident that the fight scenes were fully up to speed in costume, and there were some script revisions that Lars had wanted to make but hadn’t had time for before he had to go do things like scout out the town and pay for their performing permits. It would probably be ready to premiere at the next town, but doing it here was a bit dicey. _Ghost Murderer_ , however, was about as ready to premiere as it was ever going to be, so they only had to watch out for one of the truisms of live theater: anything can happen, and given enough opportunities, everything will. 

“You sure Lars has his lines down?” Gunthar asked. 

“I gave him and Augie their copies of the script before they left to go be advance men,” Abner said. “Whether they actually practiced with them, I can’t say. But my job as director stops when the curtain goes up. I’ve done what I can; the rest is up to you.” 

“Is no problem,” Otto said, with what was probably supposed to be a disarming grin and might have been more convincing without the pies. 

“Could you perhaps _not_ look like you’re eager to use those?” Abner groaned. 

Lars came around the corner, more or less in costume. “Hey, any changes I need to be aware of?” he asked. 

“I think I might have tweaked one of your scenes with Olga a bit. Check with her. Just a blocking change, I think, nothing about the lines.” 

Lars nodded. “Got it. Thanks.” 

Master Payne could be heard starting his introductory monologue. Abner clapped Lars on the shoulder. “Break a leg!” 

* * *

Master Payne and Countess Marie tended to judge how successful a performance was by how many pies Punch and Judy threw. The Circus had determined that the plays didn’t really suffer if the pies came out, but that may have been more because if the pies came out when they weren’t scheduled to, it meant the play was _already_ suffering. Zero pies meant the show was at least good. More than eight meant it was a disaster. 

The premiere performance of _The Heterodyne Boys and the Ghost Murderer of Australia_ had two, one after a joke that fell completely flat and the other after André missed an entrance cue due to a quick change not being quite as quick as it needed to. One was something that needed to be changed, the other was the perils of live theater (and unlikely to be repeated). All things considered, it could have gone much worse. The “Australian top ten poisons” bit had landed well, and the crowd had much enjoyed the ending, in which Bill Heterodyne had developed an immunity to the poison the ghost was using and was therefore able to subdue the ghost. 

After a short discussion with Abner about the experience (and a decision that writing a new show might be something he could do occasionally, but he didn’t want to do regularly), it was agreed that _Ghost Murderer_ could be put in the rotation. Not that this necessarily meant they would do it frequently or any time soon, with the rotation being the size it was, but it was the principle of the thing. There was even some idle talk of selling the play and getting it properly published (“Haha, yeah, next time we swing by Vienna, I’ll see if I can find a buyer”). 

* * *

Some months later, an off-duty Wulfenbach soldier found Abner in the Circus’s fairground and gave him an envelope. “You look like you know what’s going on around here,” he said, “so you can probably get this to the person it’s for.” 

The envelope was addressed simply to “The Creator of _Ghost Murderer_ ”. 

That night in his wagon, Abner opened it to discover it contained a coin and a note. 

The coin was worth twenty Pax-Guilders. The note was written on plain paper and read as follows: 

_I have had no chance to see your show, but I have heard it is entertaining. You may find it useful to learn that while I don’t know if Bill ever did, I have over the years built up an immunity to iocane powder._

_-K_

Abner did not sleep well that night. 

**Author's Note:**

> Much credit to the [Seventh Sanctum Heterodyne Story Name Generator](https://www.seventhsanctum.com/generate.php?Genname=hstory) for all of the show names except _Pneumatic Oyster_ and _Cast Iron Glacier_ , both of which are canon.


End file.
